"I was hoping and indeed put in extensive research to make sure I would get tumbleweed and the chirping of crickets," he says. "Summoning an actual demon of any kind, however attractive a specimen, was not part of the plan."

"This isn't a very good circle, but it's obviously valid. You even did it in blood, did you know that's completely unnecessary? Next time just go ahead and put it down in Sharpie."

"The objective of the circle is to make it look like someone was summoning demons here," he says. "To someone who wouldn't know the site of an actual summoning from the aftermath of a particularly debauched college party. I looked up hundreds of attested functional summoning rituals, took extensive notes, and made damn fucking sure to do absolutely none of them. And yet, here you are. Perhaps I should write a book."

"I was expecting to show up actually confined to a circle, and almost certainly also forbidden from speaking beyond agreeing to or refusing some trade for my services offered by some person. Is that a - that's a VCR. What year is this?"

"Two thousand and eight. And you are not, in fact, presently confined to the circle? Interesting. What services do you generally offer?"

"Nah, it's a terrible circle," says Cam, extending a wing over its edge. "I can do whatever I want, you're lucky you got me. Demons make things."

"Oh? What things?"

"Arbitrary non-magical matter with some reasonable quantity of underlying information to go on," shrugs Cam.

"...Interesting," he says. "Define 'reasonable quantity'."

"Give me title and author for a book I've otherwise never heard of and I can make a copy, but I can't go by ISBN or weird criteria like 'first book with a redheaded editor published in 1982 to have an epilogue and have its first edition be a trade paperback'."

"Hmm," he says. He retrieves an object from a pocket and holds it up. It is vaguely shaped like a pen. "Could you make one of these without knowing what it does?"

"Yeah. Do you want a spare?"

"Might as well, if you're offering, but it's not what I'd call urgent," he says. "Just testing what the boundaries are. You're an interesting kind of demon. What would you like to do with your time in the charming town of Sunnydale?"

"I don't know, how long are you planning to keep me?"

"Oh, is it up to me? In that case I'll keep you until you become boring," he says. "Assuming you don't have urgent business at home to which you desperately want to return."

"Nah, no languishing relationships or urgent appointments, no stuff I can't duplicate here just as easily. What constitutes being boring?"

"I'll know it when I see it. It's like pornography that way."

"Maybe I won't tell you how to send me back till I feel like going."

"If you feel like going some time after you have begun to bore me, you may find yourself staying here a very long time indeed."

"Why's that?"

"I'm not in the habit of doing favours for boring people. Assuming you're not magically obligated to follow me around like an eternal duckling, it's all the same to me whether you stay here or go home if and when you enter that category, but afterward I won't be disposed to go particularly far out of my way to ferry you between dimensions."

"No duckling-ing, no. And it's not hard to send me back, but I guess the upper bound on how long I'd be here if you didn't care to put yourself out even that far is just the end of your lifespan."

"Potentially infinite," he says. "Not practically infinite, mind you; even if I somehow found a way to keep myself comfortable and entertained until the sun exploded, I'm unlikely to safely join an expedition to another solar system before then."

"You look like a human, what'm I missing?"

"Well, isn't that cosmetically unfortunate? Anyway, you aren't dead enough to send me home to Hell. Aaaand I think you have managed to pull me to an alternate universe, rather than strictly back in time."

"Was that not obvious to begin with?"

"It seemed likely, but it just got a lot likelier."

"I suppose you don't have vampires where you're from?"

"Nope."

"Curious. What sorts of demon do you have, then?"

"Just the one," says Cam, waving a hand. "And one kind of angel and one kind of fairy."

"Well," he says, "fascinating as this conversation is, this is not the place to continue it. How would you like to come back to my crypt?"

"You have your very own crypt, huh? Snazzy. Sure, why not. Had I better hide the wings under a coat?"

"It's Sunnydale. Don't bother. Anyone who knows about magic and so forth will deduce that they probably oughtn't fuck with you and anyone who doesn't will assume it's a trick of the light or an extremely lifelike costume piece."

"Should 'Sunnydale' hold some meaning for me?" inquires Cam.

"Sunnydale, California. Home of one Hellmouth, the highest number of graveyards per capita in the country, and an absolutely astonishing mortality rate that somehow continues to be blamed on gang activity and misuse of barbecue forks." He turns to exit the room, idly taking a swig from the jug of blood as he goes.

"Stole it from the butcher's. Much simpler that way. And at least I've rescued it from the fate of being made into shitty cocktails at the exquisitely named Willy's Bar."

"Are you habitually a non-person-biting vampire, then?"

He shrugs. "What's it to you?"

"Well, if you bite people my next question is whether this is typically fatal and, if the answer is no, whether they're on board with the donation."

"Typically fatal, yes, on board with the donation, not frequently," he says. "Although there's always the odd ones out."

"Okay. Well, I can make you arbitrary humane blood."

"That sounds convenient!"

"Doesn't it just. Are there many vampires? Should I open a dispensary?"

"Yes, and you can if you like but you might not get many takers. There's a lot more thrill-of-the-hunt types than there are of whatever category you might put me in."

"That's disappointing. Why are vampires and such not common knowledge?"

"Irrational skepticism is apparently very comforting, and no one has yet been sufficiently motivated to burst the bubble."

"Back on my world I was responsible for making our sort of magic common knowledge," muses Cam.

"Well, if you want to do the same thing here, feel free. That ought to stir things up."

"In a good way?"

"In an interesting way."

"I suspect we have different priorities."

"I suspect they're more compatible than you might think."

"Do tell?"

"I want things to be interesting. I'm not especially concerned with exactly how. If you have constraints on what sort of interesting things you'd like to do, I'd still rather help than not."

"I want to improve the welfare of people in general."

"Well, that sounds potentially dull, potentially not."

"I don't suppose you can make general gestures at what bores you? Like, in the pornography case, if it's porn, there will often be naked actors."

"It's a problem of - proportion, you could call it. Most interesting things are novel, but most novel things aren't interesting. And that's only the one most easily identifiable characteristic. If I came up with a longer list, it would be worse for the rest and at the end of it you probably still wouldn't have much idea of how to distinguish interesting from boring in practice. I predict it would be faster to ask me to classify individual things as you suggest them. How do you mean to improve the welfare of people in general?"

"You said 2008? After seeing to what extent my memory of 2008 on my world matches this one beyond English and VCRs, if the match is reasonably good, off the top of my head I can patch your ozone layer, bring up the more generally harmless scientific fields by about a hundred and fifty years, save the honeybees, get you good and started on colonizing the solar system, feed some hungry people after I sit down and think about how do to that without weird political destabilization, maybe do the vampire blood dispensary."

"You think big," says the vampire. "That's promising."

"It's just a pity my world doesn't have faster-than-light yet. I can make nifty spacecraft, but nothing that'll get you to Alpha Centauri in less than a hell of a long time."

"I imagine nifty spacecraft are still better than what we've got for many practical purposes."

"Oh, yes. It's just you're complimenting me on thinking big when I was listing things I could definitely do with magic I currently have in like - a month, tops, if we assume I have to break into the homes of various scientists to nefariously leave books in their living rooms because no one will listen to me if I crash conferences. This is not big yet."

"By all means, think bigger."

"Well, I don't know anything about local magic, yet. Or how it will interact with my stuff."

"Then perhaps it will be productive to find you some research material."

"Perhaps it will."

"Mildly interesting so far. Congratulations."

"Mildly. What has historically fascinated you, then, if a demon from another world planning to cure colony collapse disorder with a discovery made in 2044 doesn't cut it?"

"Damn little. It's a problem."

"It sounds it. Do you know if bees are in fact currently having mysterious problems off the top of your head or do I need to look it up?"

"Off the top of my head, I'm afraid not. I don't pay much attention to bees. Their involvement in my food chain is several steps distant."

"Oh well. I don't think I got your name, by the way."

"Sherlock."

"Is that a typical name here?"

"Not remotely."

"Are you by any chance named after a fictional detective or did your folks just like the sound or what?"

"I am in fact named after a fictional detective. In a sense."

"In a sense?"

"I had an extremely unusual childhood. Among other quirks, I didn't have a name until I took it upon myself to pick one."

"All right. I'm Cam, I don't think I said. If introductions to people who have ordinary names for ordinary reasons isn't too mind-numbing for you."

"I appear to have survived the experience."

"Congratulations. Immortality would be a sad thing to waste. How far is your crypt, anyway?"

"Not much farther." The jug of blood is mostly empty by now; he peers into it, drains the last little bit, then tosses it over a wrought-iron fence into the third graveyard they have passed since leaving Sunnydale High. "And don't get your hopes up. I am running out of ways to avoid becoming fatally bored."

Cam looks mildly askance at the littering but doesn't raise a fuss. "Well, you may be out of luck with escaping it. If the system of the afterlife that I'm familiar with applies, you may have becoming some kind of daeva to look forward to upon dying in a less ambulatory fashion. To the extent of my ability to survey the relevant populations only people who never summoned anything end up in Limbo, but also people from the wrong year never seem to end up in Limbo, so maybe you had something else to look forward to before and now that you've got me on your resume you're going to be a wingy-thing later."

"Oh, joy," he says, with extreme sarcasm.

"Well, I was pretty thrilled over I got over my prejudices about having died and woken up in Hell specifically, but it sounds like you might do better to find a way to spend extended periods of time unconscious if it comes down to it."

"Sounds like far too much effort if you ask me."

"I can't do anything about it. I might've warned you if there had been any way to do that before you, you know, summoned me, so I'm warning you now; make of it what you will."

"Bitter complaints. Bitter complaints are what I am making of it."

"So it would seem." Cam cracks his knuckles. "Maybe I will just become ever more fascinating. Or something."

"There are a lot of graveyards in this town."

"It's because of all the deaths. At least partially. I also think someone might have encouraged their proliferation for aesthetic reasons, but I haven't come across any hard evidence to support the theory."

Cam snorts. "Grand. Can vampires starve to death?" he wonders.

"Starve to severe discomfort, certainly. To actual death, I'm not so sure."

"So I'm not doing the population any disfavors if I set up a dispensary before I go. It'd have to be preserved blood to last without regular top-up, I guess... do you want to sample state-of-the-art science-fiction blood substitute and see if that's any good?"

"Why not," he says, shrugging.

Cam makes him a little shotglass full of something a little too rust-colored to be real blood.

"Not awful," is his conclusion. "A little odd. My prediction that your dispensary will be unpopular stands, but I'd drink this stuff before I'd steal from butchers or subject myself to the tedium of hunting."

"I mean, it's sounding like to control my schedule of return I have to keep you occupied? So I can make you actual blood, too, I wanted to try that because it'd keep. If it's not going to make a dent in the need for graveyards I can concentrate on other interventions that don't necessarily have anything to do with vampires, like the bees thing."

"Actual blood is preferable. If you want to drastically lower the incidence of vampire-related deaths, which would certainly take a chunk out of human mortality rates in general, you're probably better off aiming at the reproductive process or just killing a lot of them outright. Convincing your average vampire to stop eating people is a doomed effort."

"What's the reproductive process like?"

"The vampire drinks the human's blood and, usually not consensually, induces the human to drink their blood in return. The human dies; their body undergoes a period of extremely corpselike dormancy ranging in length from a few hours to a few days, and then rises as an only moderately corpselike vampire. Opinions vary on whether or not the resulting vampire and the original human are the same person, but there are noticeable personality changes in every case."

"Okay. I'm - iffy, let's go with iffy, on killing vampires, since you appear to be a person and stuff, but I don't think I have a problem with aborting them; tips?"

"Heavily promote cremation over burial," he suggests. "I don't believe there's an existing tradition anywhere of burying people with their heads cut off or wooden stakes through their hearts, but that would work too."

"I can stake people in the grave, but if I have to personally handle it that's not efficient at all and I probably can't cover everything. I wonder if the CDC - you still have the CDC in 2008, right? - could make a dent if I told them."

"That is likely to be a deeply hilarious conversation."

"Yes, probably. Hello, CDC, I am a demon from another dimension, please listen to what I have to say about controlling the spread of vampires. Maybe I should just ignore vampires for the time being until I have more of a track record to point at. Mysterious ozone healing, mysterious bee recovery, then hello CDC would you like a century and a half of medical science by the way vampires."

Sherlock laughs. "Aren't you just delightful."

"I try. Does your crypt have Internet?"

"Alas, no."

"Okay, I'll have to figure out something else there, making stuff doesn't get me subscription access to an existing network. Are you the kind of vampire that is, shall we say, not a morning person?"

"In the sense that I catch fire in direct sunlight, yes I am."

"Okay. What time is it? And for that matter exact date?"

"Two in the morning, probably August. I haven't checked a calendar in a while."

"Okay, I'll... hold off on making myself a wristwatch till I have that, I suppose. Do you sleep?"

"Yes."

"During the day, in your crypt?" Cam confirms.

"Yes and yes. It's more comfortable than it looks; there's a slightly hidden room containing a bed."

"Okay. Do you object if I nap in said crypt now, and can I get you to wake me up when the sun rises so I can go mooch off library wifi?" Pause. "Libraries have wifi by this year, right?"

"Some of them. Possibly not the local. But they do have computers. And yes, go on."

"Preference between me making myself some form of furniture that you will then have around until you get rid of it, and me borrowing your bed?"

"Don't care in the slightest."

Cam wakes up pretty easy. "Morning. I hope you did not become suicidally bored while I was adjusting to local time."

"Happily, no. I still haven't found out how the school is going to respond to the fake summoning."

"Oh, is that what you were doing. Why?"

"The amusement value of observing their pathetic cover-up, or the interest of observing one that is not pathetic."

"Who's in charge of covering up circles of blood at the local school?"

"In most places it's the nearest person with a bad excuse ready to hand - no organized effort, no one who knows what's going on - but I have my suspicions about the principal."

"And nobody has failed at a task like this spectacularly enough that, like, the government - which employs public employees who openly consult fake psychics back in my world where all the psychics are definitely fake - has found out. Really?"

"At least some branches seem to be aware of at least some things, but clearly none of those people have taken the trouble to go public with anything more interesting than fake psychics."

"This is a spectacular coordination failure, are you sure it's natural?"

"Oh, there's probably a conspiracy or two at work."

"But they didn't show up to your vampiric orienation meeting?"

"It was rather a hurried affair."

"So it's not a comprehensive conspiracy, conspiracy agents are not showing up at your crypt to arrest you and your summoned demon for being theatrical, etcetera."

"Indeed not. No one has that kind of reach. There are any number of different interests whose reach is extensive, and I know about some and could guess at some others, but I feel confident in saying that there is no ultimate level of conspiracy with the power to identify and punish individual indiscretions."

"So it remains bizarre and questionable that it hasn't broken open. Back home the general quiet on the subject was explained by economic motives and the small population of summoners, but here - I might need to know more before I am particularly flagrant, I think."

"By all means. If you want a partial list, the Watcher's Council is one such interest; a demonic law firm called Wolfram and Hart is another."

"What makes a law firm demonic and what do Watchers watch?"

"It's rumoured to be headquartered in one of the major hells, is that demonic enough for you? Watchers watch Slayers. I suppose you don't know what those are. The Slayer, at any given time, is the latest heir of a mystical package of superpowers primarily geared toward physical combat. It is her job to run around killing vampires and other evil things until one of them gets the drop on her and the next Slayer is called to take her place."

"There are several hells? There are major and minor hells? What would a demonic law firm make of me, I wonder. Slayer's always a girl?"

"There's not so much as a breath of a rumour of any who weren't. And yes, there are multitudes of hells. Just to confuse everyone, the major ones are often referred to interchangeably or collectively as 'Hell'. The major/minor distinction is informal, but seems to rest on factors like population, overall level of influence, and the individual power of local notable demons or gods."

"How hard is it to get from - sub-world to sub-world?"

"Varyingly. Some hell dimensions and so forth are easy to get to; some are nearly impossible. I don't know many specifics, because that's never been my area of expertise."

"It's possible I should get in touch with the demonic law firm. Do I want to get in touch with the demonic law firm? Are they evil or just demonic?"

"They are extremely evil. You and they will hate each other on sight."

"Well, damn, I could have used a non-evil demonic law firm, being demonic and inclined to move and shake."

"The Council are ostensibly less evil, but will probably also hate you on sight, for some combination of cosmetic reasons and the fact that you seem inclined to disturb the status quo significantly."

"I could remove the cosmetic reasons if I had enough of a cause. The tail's mostly because it's fun, the wings are practical but for any long distance I'd want a ship and I can always regrow 'em. Why are the Watchers so attached to the status quo?"

"I have no direct information on their reasons, but suspect the high concentration of old wealthy Englishmen has something to do with it."

"I'm not exactly planning to steal their tea."

"They dislike change and things they can't control. You represent both."

"How irksome. Is there anybody liable to be friendly?"

"Potentially. Finding them could be a trick. Lucky you've got me, then, isn't it?"

"So it would seem. Anyway, you're probably going to sleep soon and I don't mean to keep you up. Can you direct me to the library or be extremely specific about how I might identify some specific local map so I can find it myself?"

"Out the front gate of the graveyard, turn left, keep going, turn right on the helpfully named 'Main Street', it's the building with the big sign out front that says 'Sunnydale Public Library'. If you go out the wrong gate you'll find that the graveyards you pass are noticeably more run-down the farther you go; retrace your steps and try again."

And Sherlock goes to bed.

"You'll have to use one of ours," says the person behind the help desk. Helpfully, she adds, "They're over there past those shelves."

"I can't unplug the cable and attach it to mine?" asks Cam with a sigh.

"Definitely not."

"Okay, thanks anyway." Cam proceeds where directed.

Cam picks a different one and looks for whatever pathetic excuse for a browser is on these things.

Cam grumbles but opens Internet Explorer. He has to concentrate not to lash his tail more than once. It's so lashable.

Cam looks up at him, a kind of what do you want expression on his face.

...He shakes his head distractedly and goes back to his apparently very incompetent computer use.

Cam's not all that much better. He's used computers like this before, but he kept up with the times, so it's been literally more than a hundred years. He pokes his way to Wikipedia, pauses to attempt to remove dust from the mouse, and starts looking up various historical events. Then he looks for anything so promising as a USB drive on this device; maybe he can conjure up a... ludicrously condensed version of his notes to compare against. His current computer model is sure not going to pass without notice here.

A floppy drive. Holy shit, this library is terrible. It's supposed to be 2008, he was what, past twenty in 2008, he doesn't remember being out of his teenage years and using fucking floppy disks. Maybe he'll just see if Sherlock wants to pack up and travel to a halfway decent city. Well, at least this device can get him Wikipedia. Sloooooooowly. Is the Earth the right size and shape and location? Yes. Is China where it belongs? Do kangaroos exist? Is Coca-Cola popular? Yep. Wikipedia, how Cam loves you.

Wikipedia is unlikely to love Cam back. Their relationship is doomed.

Discrepancies seem to be minimal! Surprisingly minimal. Astonishingly minimal.

Vampires are mythological or folkloric revenants who subsist by feeding on the blood of the living. And onward from there. It certainly doesn't seem to think they're real.

If he does, the local Cam lacks a Wikipedia page.

Cam nods cordially and wanders more or less aimlessly through the streets, thinking.

(Someone finds him there. He doesn't hear her coming. He might not see her, either, if he doesn't look behind him very frequently.)

She's pretty stealthy. She can get close as long as she doesn't make noise or come around the corner of the hedge.

Then she will be able to spy on him pretty easily.

He has a futuristic computer thing, in which he is writing in weird but recognizable English via difficult-to-follow manipulation of said thing. If she's up the tree behind him or something she could even read the larger bullet points in the outline he's making, though the small ones would be tricky. The large ones say things like 'completely ignore magic - pros/cons' and 'things to ask Sherlock' and 'getting rid of wings =/'.

Cam looks up and abruptly switches off the display of his computer and sort of stares at her.

She waits.

"Sorry, who are you?"

"Most relevantly, the Slayer," she says. "I got a report of an unknown demon wandering around town, decided to check it out, and found you here. Your plans seem pretty benign, and I'm very curious about where you came from and the details of some of those bullet points."

"My sources on that don't report to anyone but me, and I'd rather not identify them to you until I know you a little better, so I can be sure they won't suffer for it."

"Okay, and why do I want to talk to you?"

"I think we could be useful to each other," she says. "If you wanted to interface extensively with the local population without getting rid of your wings, for example. Or find good sources for information about magic."

"Okay. I'm a demon somebody accidentally summoned, my name is Cam, I think this is an alternate dimension because the magic is completely different, also where I'm from it's the year 2159 but this place seems apart from the magical discrepancies to be bizarrely like the same year where I came from to the point where I am planning to check relevant locations for a twenty-year-old version of myself."

"Well, that's every bit as fascinating as I expected," says the Slayer. "Call me... hmm. Call me James. What kind of magic are you used to? Or is it too complicated for an easy overview? That's pretty much the situation around here."

"I can easy-overview you. There are a handful of nearly useless parlor tricks humans can do, and also, they can summon daeva, who come in three types - demons, angels, fairies. Distinguished cosmetically but also by plane of residence and magic type. For example, I live in Hell and what I can do is make things."

"What kinds of things? For that matter, what kinds of nearly useless parlour tricks?"

"Arbitrary not-inherently-magical matter - although it may be the not-inherently-magical restriction is lifted if I had something magic to copy, I can't just naively make a fountain of youth or whatever. Parlor tricks can, with kind of inordinate amounts of effort, press the keys on a keyboard or turn things sort of uneven colors very slowly - I haven't used them in ages. I think the only widespread use of them back home anymore is for irretrievably paralyzed people to operate devices."

"Well, demon magic sounds tremendously handy. What is a vampire dispensary, by the way?"

"Oh, apparently you have vampires here? I was thinking I could make them, you know, food, but I'm not sure how to do it efficiently or get them to actually use it instead of eating people."

"We do have vampires. I predict any campaign to get them to eat from sources other than live humans will be somewhat less successful than a campaign to get humans to subsist exclusively on protein shakes and vitamin supplements."

"Hence my frustration. I really don't appreciate you reading over my shoulder, by the by."

"There's about a one in six chance that any unfamiliar and unusual person of the supernatural variety who shows up in Sunnydale is plotting to destroy the world," she says. "I don't regret it. But I'm not going to do it again to you in particular, because I'm satisfied that destroying the world is not on your to-do list."

"I'm still seriously considering taking my further notes in a demonic language until I go home again. I really don't like that. Especially considering that obviously anyone who had plans to destroy the world in the past didn't get even far enough to leave a crater where I expect there to be Belgium or something."

"Plots to destroy the world have not been successful despite their frequency largely because the Slayer or someone like her notices in time to stop them," she says. "I am the Slayer. It's my job to notice things like that in time to stop them. And for future reference, three out of the five apocalypses I've stopped this year involved someone trying to open the Hellmouth and of the last two, one was based around a demonic shrine a few miles out of town and the other was an attempt to call forth a powerful demon out of an imported statue. All the kind of thing where if it succeeds, you can tell because the sun went dark or everything is on fire or the legions of hell are pillaging the Earth from every direction, but if it fails you pretty much only know it happened if you were there or someone tells you about it."

"I hope you will forgive me if I am slightly skeptical that something that has obviously never finished happening starts to happen every alternate Tuesday and this conveniently justifies you in racial profiling. Anyway. Now what?"

"I'm told this has been a heavy year, actually. There are usually only two or three. I think a possible 'now what' is you tell me some plans and I suggest ways I could be helpful to them."

"You read over my shoulder, you don't like the dispensary idea, anything else catch your eye?" he sighs.

"Everything I saw: 'completely ignore magic - pros/cons', 'things to ask Sherlock', 'getting rid of wings', 'go through med notes and give to someone', 'maybe just fly to Mars and set it up nice for them later', 'there has got to be some way to make a vampire dispensary work'," she lists. She has the wording verbatim on all of them. "I'm interested in med notes, what you'd do with Mars, and what you meant about the pros and cons of ignoring magic; I'm also wondering who Sherlock is but I don't think that's likely to have immediate practical relevance."

"Right, so, it's 2159 where I'm from and medical science has advanced correspondingly. I keep on top of it more than I do, say, the advances that have been made in orchid cultivation, because, one, it's useful for personal alterations if I ever want to make any - the wings and tail I had models, if I decide I want something non-standard I'd better know about how people are put together - two, in case I'm ever on a summon and have the flexibility and opportunity to make stuff to heal someone. So I know and can conjure up notes for a century and a half of medicine you don't have and I'm not sure where to drop it to good effect. Mars I'd just make a little spaceship and go there and give it an atmosphere and topsoil and some plants and water so it would be comfortable for Earthlings who visited later. That would be an example of something I could do while ignoring magic besides my own, because it sounds like a mess."

"Your view of magic besides your own is pretty accurate, but I happen to have an in with a witch who is much less of a mess than average," she says. "I could also probably figure out something to do with your medical notes if you don't want to handle that part yourself. I don't have the connections now, but finding the right people to inform about medical advances falls under the purview of what I plan to do with my life besides Slaying. No input on Mars; seems like you've got that handled."

"The library I was in earlier had floppy disk drives, so search me if I know what format to give you the notes in, but you're welcome to have a copy. No promises I won't duplicate them somewhere else if an opportunity comes up."

"Sure, that makes perfect sense. You could for example give me one of your nifty future computers."

"You couldn't charge it unless I also give you a wireless electricity station and a whole string of power adapters to plug it into your wall, and I have not yet decided to supply that kind of tech, either the wireless electricity or the computation, nice try. Besides, you wouldn't know how to operate it unless I gave you lessons."

"I'm assuming nifty future computer batteries last at least long enough for me to read the highlights and maybe retype some things. I'm also assuming that the interface isn't so arcane I couldn't figure it out on my own with a little effort, because I don't expect intuitive usability in computer design to decline over the next century and a half. It would admittedly be more convenient if you could get it in a format modern computers could read - the library machines are ancient, by the way, and my home computer is not, you might have better luck there."

"My concerns include that you would take apart the nifty future computer when its battery died. What counts as 'intuitive' changes a lot with background culture. I will happily make you a - what came after floppies? DVDs?"

"Technically CDs came after floppies, but DVDs have in fact been invented and my computer can in fact read them, so they're a better option."

"Okay, here's the box set," says Cam, producing what does indeed look like a boxed set of DVDs in a plain white case. "Annotated medical textbooks for the last century and a half, have fun."

"Thanks, I will."

"Anything else?"

"It would be convenient to have a way to contact each other, in case you decide you want to meet my aunt the witch, or you want something done that requires going places where your awkwardly bulky leather coat is going to stand out. You know more than I do about your options for using things like phones and email."

"If people are going to notice through the coat I might as well just saw them off," grumbles Cam. "I can make phones and computers and so on but that doesn't automatically get them onto any subscription-based service. I'd offer you a walkie-talkie, but, tech concerns. You could buy me a phone."

"I could buy you a phone," she agrees. "If I buy you a phone, I'd like some help paying for it. Any moral qualms about, oh, a handful of diamonds? My aunt uses them as a spell component sometimes; if we don't have to keep stocked, that's more money to pay for your phone."

"Sure, diamonds aren't a tech problem, just give me specs on how big and how you want them cut."

"Is your aunt the witch who is not as much of a mess as other sources on magic?"

"Yep."

"Are we friends, now? I'm still way back in 'not giving out arbitrary information about future technology'."

"In this case 'friend' was meant to communicate 'person I expect to be talking to and cooperating with frequently in the near future'."

"Okay. How are we getting me my phone?"

"Well, I could go get it and then mysteriously find you again, but I'm going to guess you won't be fond of that option. And mysteriously finding people takes time and effort I could be putting towards better things. Relatedly, it might interest you to know that Slayer senses definitely think there is something up with you, but aren't clear about what. I can tell vampires from anything else and some kinds of demon from each other if I pay attention, and sometimes I get a read off an especially powerful or strongly affiliated magic user; you're just some unspecified kind of slightly weird. But it's an indication that getting rid of the wings might not completely do the job of letting you pass for human."

"How many people are going to be sensing me Slayerishly, though?"

"One, I hope, since if you met another one that would indicate I was dead. But if Slayerish senses in particular get something from you, it's likely that there's some other kind of magic somewhere that gets something from you too. And I wouldn't know what kind it might be or who might have it. Magic doesn't tend to come in perfectly unique kinds without any overlap in scope. There's only one Slayer, but there's other magic that improves your strength or reflexes or lets you sense things most people can't or gives you unreliable, uninformative, and unpleasant prophetic dreams. Can you tell which part of the Slayer package I like the least? I bet you can."

"I'm going to guess it's the improved reflexes," deadpans Cam, "I don't blame you, those sound terrible. Okay. So I'm detectable via nonvisual means, potentially."

"Yeah. I thought that might be useful information. Anyway, regarding getting you your phone - do you particularly want to come along and shop for it? Either way, I think the simplest thing to arrange would be to meet back here or at some more easily findable landmark at some agreed-upon time tomorrow; the only difference is whether I bring you a phone or we proceed to go get one. I know the town better than you do, so you should pick a meeting place you know you can find."

"I can find this park bench tomorrow morning, does this park bench tomorrow morning at like I don't know eight work for you? And I will trust your judgment on phones, do you need the diamonds in advance?"

"Diamonds in advance would be nice but isn't strictly necessary. This park bench tomorrow morning at eight works just fine."

Cam shrugs and drops a little bag of diamonds into her hand. "I will see you tomorrow, then? Are you planning to surreptitiously follow me after I leave?"

"I'm not going to surreptitously follow you. I'm going to go home and give my aunt her diamonds and check out your future medical research."

"And is whoever has been reporting to you on suspicious demonic activity going to surreptitiously follow me?"

"Whoever has been reporting to me on suspicious demonic activity is not present, not particularly good at surreptitiously following people, and not planning any such thing as far as I know."

"I didn't notice being followed," Cam points out, "so obviously their skill at surreptitious following suffices. Although then again I also wasn't on the lookout for stalkers. Anyway. All right then. Hope your aunt enjoys her diamonds."

"Thanks. See you tomorrow."

Cam waves.

James waves back. Off she goes.

Cam waits around for a while, then wanders, makes sure he knows where the crypt is but doesn't stop there, goes back to the library and gets a large book and hides his computer in that book in an armchair in the corner and does notetaking, and then eventually meanders back to Sherlock's place.

He will find Sherlock sitting in his bed in his slightly secret room, drinking tea and reading Hound of the Baskervilles.

"Hi. The coat isn't sufficiently concealing. I made friends with someone claiming to be the Slayer and gave her a small bag of diamonds and a set of DVDs full of medical advances."

"Well that's interesting. What did this Slayer look like? Did she offer a name? Why diamonds? For that matter, what did she want with the medical advances?"

"I didn't tell her anything about you - although she was reading over my shoulder and I didn't notice and she espied a bullet point entitled 'things to ask Sherlock' because like a moron I was writing in English - and am now wondering if I should do the reverse courtesy, because, vampire, Slayer?"

"You can tell her about me if you like. Fair warning that she might try to kill me, but if she made friends with you under circumstances best described by 'the coat isn't sufficiently concealing', she might be open to reason on the subject. I am certainly not going to try to kill her."

"Okay, I'm going to take your word for that and will not be best pleased if it's not any good and would sort of prefer to be there if ever the two of you meet in case she does try to kill you. Her name's James but I think the rest of it should wait till I have her permission, which I can get tomorrow morning when she gives me a phone."

"Suits me fine," he says cheerfully. "Anything else interesting happen?"

"The computers in the library take floppy disks and run Internet Explorer, both of which I recall despising while still alive. But you have Wikipedia, which is nice, and it shows almost alarming consistency with what I remember considering that I know there's large differences under the surface. If there's a me, he doesn't have a Wikipedia page under his own name or under my anonymously-revealing-magic-to-the-population handle."

"Despising Internet Explorer is practically a national pastime as far as I can tell. How else might you go about looking for a you, with Wikipedia tapped out? The search might be mildly interesting."

"I'd check the towns I grew up in, look for my parents maybe, they were both public employees. In 2008 I'd try Forks first but Phoenix would be worth a try even if that didn't pan out."

"I could help if you liked."

"And you're not going to, like, eat my mom or anything? I would not normally ask but just to be extra sure."

"I will refrain from eating any of your relatives unless you specifically point them out as people you would not mind eaten."

"Nah, they're all divided into the categories of 'I would strenuously object' and 'they were kind of meh and now I can't remember their names off the top of my head'. So, my full name is Campbell Mark Swan. I was born in Forks, Washington to a cop later promoted to chief of police, Charlie Swan, and to Renée Swan, née Higgenbotham, which she stopped using as soon as she had an alternative. They got divorced when I was a baby, Renée moved me to Phoenix and finished getting her education degree and started teaching kindergarten, and I grew up there except visiting my dad every summer, for longer periods of time as it got safer to leave me home alone. When I was seventeen Renée remarried, minor league baseball guy, I should have looked him up but I could not for the life of me produce his name without checking and couldn't check in the library and it didn't occur to me before now -" Cam takes out his computer, fiddles with it, finishes: "Phil Dwyer. And they moved to Jacksonville and I moved in with Charlie instead. Then I found books on summoning and parlor tricks in an abandoned mansion just outside Forks, which I gather my double, if present, has not done, at least not to comparable effect."

"I see. And of course small perturbations to this arrangement quickly become impractical to check - if your father exists and is chief of police somewhere other than Forks, he is potentially findable, but if he exists somewhere other than Forks and is not chief of police or comparably notable, he is a very small needle in a very large haystack. If your mother exists, does not happen to be Googleable with known information, and has never been to Forks or Phoenix, we are not going to find her except by accident."

"Yep. They were both born in Forks, in my world, but that might not be the same either."

"Yes. If the whole family lives in, I don't know, Canada, you're out of luck."

"Yeah, probably, at least until my doppelganger does something cool. Or notices me doing cool things and tracks me down."

"Is your doppelganger guaranteed to do cool things?"

"Well, sheesh, I'd hope so, or he's not much of a doppelganger, is he?"

Sherlock snorts.

"Like, if there is some guy named Campbell Mark Swan with the right parents who presently lives in Forks and works at the sporting goods store or something I'm not impressed!"

"Perhaps he works at the sporting goods store because he is saving money with which to later implement a plan to take over the world."

"That is not an impressive way to collect money, like, even if he is operating in ignorance of magic. If he's me he should be more than smart enough to have a scholarship and attend college, maybe med school, I'd take 'doing premed but nothing else yet', that would be okay."

"You have high standards for the accomplishments of your hypothetical alternate universe selves."

"I would also take 'calculated magical risk blew up in his face and he's dead or comatose', I mean, I lived to be 22, but I will not stand for deficient ambition."

"Similar ambition and a greater helping of obstacles could easily lead him to be working at the sporting goods store or similar while attempting to move forward with something more grandiose."

"I can come up with no excuse for the sporting goods store. Truck drivers make better money and have time to think and maybe narrate thoughts into a little voice recorder of whatever the technological standard for that is these days, off the top of my head, there are no advantages to retail."

He shrugs. "Truck driver could be ruled out by other circumstances dictating that he stay in one place. I'm sure I could come up with similar excuses to rule out any other career you could name, but I'm less sure I want to bother. If we run across a double of you who is pursuing an ignoble career due to circumstances outside his control, I will happily announce that I told you so. If we run into one who is just plain dull, you may freely taunt me in return."

Cam shrugs. "Anyway. Tomorrow morning I meet the Slayer and collect a phone, maybe under cover of darkness I make a bitty little spaceship and fly to Forks and see if Charlie's house is there."

"Have fun."

"You can come along if you want. I have some interest in keeping an eye on you."

"Oh, happily, then."

"Cool. Don't expire of boredom in the next like thirty hours, please."

"It's extremely unlikely."

"Excellent. I don't think anyone followed me back to your crypt but I am considering putting an alarm on the door anyway."

"It would be interesting if someone had."

"Yeah, it'd tell me that James is a damn liar, do you object to alarming the door?"

"Not especially."

Cam makes a little alarm with sticky backing. "Fingerprint," he says, after fiddling with it and presenting a surface of it to Sherlock.

Fingerprint!

Cam fingerprints it too, then puts it on the door and fiddles with it some more. "Fingerprint it to calm it down before it whistles alarmedly. There's more sophisticated options but they'd require an actual security service."

"Noted."

Cam sits in his hammocky thing and fusses with his computer.

Sherlock reads his book and pays a moderate amount of attention to Cam.

Cam is not doing much besides - whatever it is that's causing words to appear on his screen projection - and occasionally exhibiting body language mostly via his tail.

"You're not reading over my shoulder too, are you? I will translate this entire device into Celambiric, see if I don't."

"I am, but not for informational content, and I can stop if you like."

"I don't like it when people look at my notes. Told the Slayer off for it. She had an excuse about apocalypses being frequent enough to excuse spying on strangers with lumpy coats."

"I wanted to see if I could figure out how you're making the words appear in the first place," he says. "And she's on solid ground there, if you wanted to know. Based strictly on rumours encountered in the demonic community, I'd estimate the global rate of serious attempts to end the world per year at around two - not always particularly competent attempts, mind you, but it doesn't need to be all that competent to succeed in the absence of opposition. Luckily for the world, there always seems to be oppositon. That's counting world takeover by demonic forces under 'end of the world', but discounting any plan that would have failed on its own merits even without external intervention; I have no way of estimating how frequently a group of demons gets together over drinks and engages in ultimately fruitless discussion of their long-held dream to bring about about hell on earth, but I suspect the number is high."

"Do you want me to tell you how I'm working the computer or would that spoil the surprise?" wonders Cam. "Also, your world kind of sucks."

"In the ultimate ranking of universes for comfort and convenience I would not be inclined to guess we land in the top half," Sherlock agrees. "And if you don't want me watching you may as well spoil it, since I'm not going to find out by staring at the wall."

"Eensy cybernetic implant. There are versions that don't require 'em but they're clunkier and less secure." Cam taps the back of his head.

"That does explain it."

Book book book.

Eventually Cam goes to sleep, and wakes up a bit before eight, and has plenty of time to wriggle into his leather coat and go meet the Slayer. How nice of her not to have alarmed the easily startled door in that time.

When he gets there, she's sitting on the relevant bench, writing in a notebook.

"Hullo. Sherlock says I may tell you about him, but I am debating the wisdom of this course of action, since I don't think he has much in the way of a self-preservation instinct."

"Which implies that he's some variety of demon. Well, I've demonstrated I don't kill those on sight, which is a step up from some Slayers I've heard of. I try not to kill people in general unless it's an obviously better idea than leaving them alive. Most vampires, for example, or anyone who is actively trying to end the world and can't be discouraged any less directly."

"He seems at least reasonably harmless, and if you kill him, I will almost certainly go home, which wouldn't be devastating but would be disruptive if I wasn't ready."

"Reasonably harmless is good enough. I reserve the right to change my mind if he turns out to be plotting widespread destruction."

"Well, he's a vampire, assuming he wasn't lying to me and vampires are the ones who drink blood and do the face thing."

"Yep. Vampire. What's his stance on eating people?"

"Cagey about discussing it at first but ultimately not married to the practice, claimed to have robbed a butcher's shop to rescue its contents from use in inferior beverages, drinks what I make him. Futuristic shelf-stable synthetics are apparently potable but not tasty."

"That's unusually good as vampires go. You can keep him with my blessing."

"Thank you for not obliging me to find a way to break up a fight between a vampire and a Slayer."

"No problem."

"Do I get a phone?"

"Yes you do." She hands it over.

Cam pokes at it and refamiliarizes himself with the basics of its operation. When he has figured out how to add numbers, he notices she's already in there. "Convenient. Okay. Your aunt like the diamonds?"

"I try! Yes she did. Would you like to meet her?"

"Sure, why not."

He follows her. "It seems like, you know, a town, I've only met the two supernatural creatures, you and Sherlock. I've been crashing with Sherlock and he hasn't complained yet. If that becomes a problem I will acquire a motorcycle and drive it until I find someplace good to hide a house rather than deal with hoteling."

"It must be so convenient to be you."

"I like it."

"I'd like it too if I could conjure arbitrary objects out of thin air. Alas, local magic isn't nearly that nice."

"I'm getting that impression, yes."

"Has its uses, though."

"Such as?"

"My aunt happens to be stunningly good at protection spells. Very handy for a Slayer. I aspire to break the record and live past twenty-six."

"Uh, best of luck," blinks Cam.

"Thanks," she says.

"I guess vampires and things try to kill you a lot?"

"Yep. And quitting wouldn't even help, because one of the lesser-known Slayer powers is 'mystical trouble magnet'. It's a problem."

"Sounds like it. Maybe if you continue to favorably impress me I will make you a snazzy suit of armor or something."

"Hi. Cam," says Cam.

"Nice to meet you. C'mon in. I hear you might have questions about magic?"

"I don't currently have anything specific enough to be a question. I have confusions about magic. Can I get the introductory syllabus?"

"Okay," she says. "I think a good way to explain the basics might be: Over the course of human history, every so often, somebody has invented a way to do magic based on what made sense to them at the time or what they thought would work from hearing about other people's real or imagined successes. And some of these things, but not all of them, have turned out to actually work. And whenever somebody found one that did - and sometimes when they found one that didn't and just misinterpreted the results - they stuck with it and elaborated on it and taught it to other people who elaborated some more and forgot parts and changed details and generally messed around. And again, some of those changes stuck around, but not all of them, and the original methods usually weren't completely erased in the process. So now, after however many thousands of years of this, the state of the world's magic is an enormous clusterfuck. It would be like if the outcomes of scientific experiments were decided by rolling dice and the universe stuck to its guns on them afterward, occasionally even when they contradicted each other. That's basically the underlying foundations of magic."

"That sounds exasperating. With all that I'm glad mine still works here."

"It can be a pain. My great trick is that I kept researching different traditions until I found a handful that suited me, and then I invented my own out of those and a few other things that seemed to make sense. So now I have a nice, reasonably tidy, reasonably flexible structure to work with."

"How long did that take?"

"A while. I was partway through it by the time I was eighteen and much farther along by the time I was twenty-five. It's not really something that stops; I'm still making progress on what I've got and keeping an eye out for other things I could integrate."

"So if I don't stay longer than I had planned it seems sort of unlikely to be an ideal use of my time to do the same thing."